Google’s Cr-48 Chrome OS netbook: first impressions

[Note: Jim Thompson was lucky enough to be picked by Google to receive a Cr-48. He’ll be writing a series of guest TechBlog posts about his experience with the prototype notebook. I’ll also have my own review in Tuesday’s Computing column – D.S.]

Fit and finish – The device is quite plain in appearance, with a matte black finish and no logos or badges whatsoever. It is larger than many netbooks, and at about 3.8 pounds with battery, feels more like a small notebook. Although its case is plastic, it feels quite solid.

Keyboard – The Cr-48 has a full-sized keyboard with chicklet-style keys, similar to those on my MacBook Pro (MBP). Typing on it is quite pleasant. I definitely miss the Mac’s key backlighting, although that’s a feature I wouldn’t expect to find on a netbook. The Cr-48 does not have a Caps Lock key, replacing it instead with a Quick Search key. Tapping this key brings up a new browser tab, which by default has a search field and list of installed apps. I don’t miss the Caps Lock key because I always remap Caps Lock to be a Control key. Having grown up with Unix, my fingers expect to find Control to the left of ‘A’, and I’ve never been able to retrain them.

Trackpad – Here’s a real weakness. The Cr-48 has a Mac-style buttonless trackpad; to click, you press down on the bottom part of the trackpad. Unfortunately, it takes considerable pressure to click, and I have trouble doing a click-and-drag without accidentally releasing the button. The trackpad has a tap-to-click option, but frequent unintentional taps are a nuisance, in particular when I’m typing. I also have trouble getting the trackpad to recognize a two-finger tap, either for bringing up context menus or for scrolling. Google needs to spend a lot of time fine-tuning the usage of this trackpad; hopefully a fix can be delivered by software or firmware.

Screen – The Cr-48’s 12.1-inch LCD screen is bright and crisp. At maximum, it’s only about 90% as bright (judging by eyeball) as my MBP’s display, but that’s been sufficiently bright everywhere I’ve needed to use it. I haven’t seen specs on the display’s backlight, but it goes from cold off to fully bright almost instantly, so I assume it’s an LED backlight. The Cr-48’s display resolution is reported to be about 1280×800; it has a VGA output, but when enabled, the display resolution drops to 1024×768.

Battery – The Cr-48’s lithium-ion battery is wide but thin, and accounts for nearly one pound of the netbook’s weight. Google claims it provides 8 hours of runtime; I haven’t timed my battery life, but I know I used it for most of the day Saturday on a single charge. 8 hours seems a reasonable claim.

Ports – Minimal; in addition to the VGA port, the Cr-48 has a power port, a headphone jack, and a single USB port. The Cr-48 will work with either a USB keyboard or mouse – or both, if you plug in a USB hub. Given my problems with the trackpad, I much prefer a mouse. The USB port can also be used in developer mode to load a second OS such as Ubuntu.

Sight and sound – The Cr-48 has a pair of built-in stereo speakers, one on each side of the base. Like the tiny speakers in any netbook or notebook, they don’t produce overwhelming sound, but they’re far from the worst I’ve heard. Mounted above the LCD display are a camera and microphone; I have yet to try them in a video chat.

Boot and wake times – Here’s the part where Google’s netbook really rocks. It will boot, from powered off to ready for login, in about 10 seconds. It wakes from sleep almost instantly – in about one second. This is an oft-repeated statistic, but we must consider that for a netbook to be fully functional after waking, it must also connect to the network. Connecting to the wi-fi network takes another few seconds, so the Cr-48’s wake time, from sleep to network ready, is effectively about five seconds.

Overall usability – I’ve been using the Chrome browser almost exclusively for about six months now. I’ve been using Google’s cloud apps for considerably longer. I not only use Gmail as my mail repository, but I imported a decade-long archive of old email into to it. ALL my email is at Google. I have also been using Google Docs and Spreadsheets for years, to track everything from auto maintenance records, to dieting progress, to drafts of TechBlog posts like this one.

I also have a number of custom-built maps created with Google Maps. Picasa is the exception where I deviate from the Google franchise – I tend to use Flickr for photos I want to make public, and iPhoto on my MBP for my much larger photo archive.

For what it is – a lightweight netbook designed for quick access to the Internet – the Cr-48 appears to succeed wildly. But using the Cr-48 and Chrome Os to access Google’s cloud apps is a little different than using those same apps from a Chrome browser hosted on a conventional OS. Offline storage isn’t there – or isn’t easy to get to. Moving data between applications is no longer as easy as just saving a file from one app and loading it onto another. Lots of usage conventions that we’ve learned on our Macs and PCs will have to be relearned for the cloud, and many of them will seem painful, at least until brighter minds come up with ways to work around these myriad little problems.

Don’t get me wrong; I have great hope for the Cloud. I firmly believe that the “Cloud” or something like it is the inevitable best future of computing. I’ve been saying for years that access to my data should not depend upon which computer I happen to sit down at, and the Cloud is part of the solution.

I won’t pretend that Google’s Cr-48 netbook is anything more than a baby step towards this information Utopia. But I do have high hopes for the 1Cr-48; I want it to succeed so that we are at least taking baby steps in the right direction, and so that our next step might be a bigger one.

Over the next couple of weeks to a month – depending upon how long I can stand it – I will be testing the notion of living in the Cloud, by way of my Cr-48 netbook. I’ll be reporting my experiences back here.

Wish me luck.

Jim Thompson

13 Responses

Nice review. I think it’s pretty spot-on. I got mine last week as well. Personally I think my screen brightness is less than 90% of my MacBook’s, but I haven’t done a true side-by-side comparison. Good observation about the trackpad too – I have yet to find a laptop of any brand that can match the responsiveness of an Apple trackpad.

I think the laptop as a whole is very good, but I have yet to discover the “great” aspect of it (other than being free, of course!). Dealing with downloaded files is going to be a painful learning curve – the included file-browser is quite limited. But I have no doubt that Google will make tweaks over time, and I’m excited to see what they do with it.

I was only going to take my iPad on an upcoming trip, but I might toss in the CR-48 as well to see how I use it. Please keep up the reviews!

I’m not familar with Google’s ‘cloud’ implementation. Does it have the ability to automatically sync with updates / revisions to local copies worked on while off-line or must all work be performed on-line?

If you are have problems with the two finger “right-click” try to press the alt key and then use one finger to click. It works a lot better for me. I have also found holding one finger down on the trackpad and swipe the other finger works better for scrolling than swiping both fingers. I’m trying not to use the mouse, but it is tempting. The system is the early beta stage and is a little rough, but I see the potential for the casual computer user. I think it would be great for my wife or mother-in-law who use the computer mainly for e-mail and web surfing.

NoWhining: I haven’t fully tested offline mode, but document editing, at least, doesn’t seem to work well while offline. It allows edits to documents, but after a minute or so appears to try to sync and then nada. I’m definitely going to be working more with getting offline mode figured out.

RHMathis: just to spite you, and so I don’t have to correct the post, I have drawn small chickens onto each key on the keyboard. Besides, my editor should have caught that, so I blame him.

Tim – Under the network icon it will tell you how much data you have left, it should be under the Verizon Wireless network listing if you have Cellular enabled.

Jim – I have found that if you keep both fingers together side-by-side the two-fingered click works most of the time, but the trackpad is disapointing, to make it useable I had to crank the sensitivity up to the max and disable Tap-to-click.

To the n-gum brand keys, I just call them Scrabble keys or Scrabble Tile Keys, or if pressed Generic-Crossword-Game inspired buttons.

Note – I have applied a Google Provided sticker onto my Cr48. Looks nice, but it has lost some of the no-branding charm. Yet I don’t look on the outside much anyway.

Sounds like either Jim’s monitor hate his Cr-48 or his Cr-48 hates his monitor. My Cr-48 would also only output to 1024×768 when doing mirroring, but it’s because it was having problems finding my external display. After fighting with mine (loose cable — ugh…), my Cr-48 outputs the display’s full resolution (1680×1050). Hopefully Jim can eventually display to his display’s full resolution. It makes using the Cr-48 THAT much nicer.

Tim – According to the docs, Chrome will warn you when you near the 100 MB limit, and when you hit it, will give you the option of buying more data.

TSSaloic – I have a rather large supply of the white Apple logo stickers you get when you buy a Mac or iPxd. I’m thinking of slapping one on my Cr-48 just for mischief’s sake.

Travis – How do you go from mirroring to VGA-only? I fiddled around, but couldn’t find a way to do that. My monitor’s native resolution is 1920×1200, so I would love to get more pixels out of the VGA port.

I would have applied an Apple sticker, but if I were to do that it would have to be the old Rainbow Apple sticker. It already looks enough like an old black MacBook (Which I think are the best looking MacBooks yet). I wish Apple would make black aluminum MacBook Air/Pro notebooks (Salivates). Anyway coloring in the Apple sticker is just too much work, but a plain Chrome sticker (or Chromium) would be very much welcome.